So Fresh & So Clean

Originally we had reserved this past weekend for a camping trip on the island with some of our friends. Unfortunately, some unexpected financial obligations arose and we had to back out last minute. We were sad to miss it, but on the upside we accomplished A LOT around here (including meeting new friends in our neighbourhood for both Halle and myself! Exciting!!).

With Halle's birthday party happening this coming weekend, we really want to house to be clean and as organized as possible before our friends show up (we're still settling in after the move). After reading this post last week by my blogging pal Sheila, I wanted to tackle a project we've been putting off since we moved in - our front door. From a distance, it didn't look like much more than a white painted door (with mismatched hardware). 

When you got closer, the ugly became a bit more obvious. The door itself is your run of the mill exterior grade steel door, but it had never been painted and was incredibly dirty and marked up. To make it look even worse, the brass paint from the door handle was chipping off and it just looked awful.

We had already bought some flat black spray paint to use for the door handle a while ago, but we needed to decide what do for the door itself. We talked colours and picked up some paint swatches to bring home and test next to our siding. We'd even considered purchasing a new window insert that we saw at Home Depot for $28. In the end, it came down to the fact that the door is NOT our style at all, and eventually we'd like to replace it with a nice wood door like this, this, or (my personal favourite) this.

With all this in mind, we opted to use some white exterior paint that B needed for another project (to be shared soon), and just freshen up the front door. Once I started painting it was obvious how grey and dirty the door really was.

It took about 3 coats to get the door looking great, and once we put that black door handle back on everything was looking much crisper around here. 

The door handle was pretty easy to clean up. B just gave it a good sanding to get all the old chipped paint off, and then we gave it three light and even coats of the matte black spray paint. It's looking fantastic and matches our deadbolt nicely!

Isn't it great that one day of light work can make such a noticeable difference? Have you been freshening anything up around your place recently?